Re: [gentoo-user] Duplicate identical Hard Disk

[Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 4:02 PM, Paul Hartman
<paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 5:48 PM, Joseph <syscon780@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I have two identical HD in the box and want to duplicate sda to sdb;
>> sdb is not even partitioned.
>> I think I could do:
>> dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb
>> but I need to boot from CD isn't it?
>
> Yes, basically, boot from USB or CD and use ddrescue to clone it, then
> edit your fstab and I think you should be good.
>
> RAID1 would help if a drive physically dies, but if you had any
> filesystem corruption or anything you'd just have an identically
> corrupt copy on the second disk.

A big part of my struggles over the last few days has been with mdadm
& RAID1. I'm learning that we don't want to send someone down that
path unless he has the right sort of disks. I'm having to deal with
returns and reordering due to this.

People should be aware of what is really required to do RAID before
they get started so they don't duplicate my trials. I wasn't and I'm
paying for it. (Almost literally if I don't get the drives in the
mail!) ;-)

Cheers,
Mark